Yesterday was detox the wardrobe day with Hannah Jean of Find My Style. In my quest for transparency/authenticity, we will note that Hannah is my cousin (we lost touch for years, and got back in touch via Facebook), but this was a paid gig. One of the blog posts that convinced me to go for it was:

In image consulting, body shape is interpreted through the line that your shoulders and hips create. Ultimately this means that your body shape is based on your bone structure and alignment not on your weight. It does not matter how much you exercise to tone your muscle or how much weight you put on/take off: the basic frame of your body will remain the same. Read full blog post.

Post Beyond-Chocolate I have also been working on only having things in the wardrobe that I (kind-of) liked, but I was feeling I was getting stuck. I wasn’t entirely sure what to expect from the day – was it going to be Trinny & Susannah, or a bit more Gok Wan? I’ve stayed with Hannah a few times recently, and we’ve talked about her work with Diva-Licious and Dove Self-Esteem, so I knew about her work with those who need to build up confidence in what they’re wearing.

It was quite an emotional experience, and I think took us about 6 hours in total (Hannah totally earnt her money, but we had fun too!). Over the past few weeks I’ve collected a few images relating to colour, etc. onto Pinterest, so we started by talking about those, with Hannah noting down the kind of words that were emerging as to what I want to see in my style, e.g. professional but not corporate, take me seriously, etc., with comfort still underlying it (otherwise I won’t bother wearing it, except for special occasions!).

We then went through my wardrobe, coats, then trousers, then skirts, then tops, then cardigans, etc. Hannah very much believes that wardrobes should work as wardrobes, so a load of stuff I had stored in the shelf above I have to find another home for. Occasionally we’d take a picture of something to see if there’s was an outfit in something I otherwise hadn’t worn much:

We then moved onto the stored stuff in the cupboard that doesn’t fit (I was keeping it for when/if I lose weight, but once we actually looked at it, it’s not great quality, or was suitable for a time in my past, but not now). It was, however, OK to keep some things that had memories attached to them ‘the posterity bag’. By that stage it was much easier to chuck things out. We came back to belts, bags, etc. and yes, I had a lot of cotton/hemp bags, scarves and all sorts, and as we’d done with t-shirts, could only keep enough that they would fit OK in the storage space I have (otherwise I don’t use them). A number of things have gone into storage cupboards, so that everything that’s accessible is ready to wear now. We then ensured that all the hangers were ‘size free’ – doesn’t matter what size it is – does it fit?! See here Hannah with the pile of stuff we moved out (sorry if you see anything you gave me, but we had to be tough!)

After 4.5 hours we’d had enough so decided to head into town, for a meal & the 45 minutes that the shops were still open for. Hannah’s a big believer in getting rid of things from the flat asap, in case you’re overcome by temptation to go back through and take things out (believe me – no – I’ve paid someone to come & do this, it’s taken ages, I don’t want to take it back out again… but apparently I’m unusual in that), so here you see – 4 bags into the clothes bin (they can make someone else happy) - there was also another bag of useless clothes into the rubbish bin:

Image by @findmystyle

Having bought a new top, cardigan, and some underwear (it’s important!), we zoomed off to  40th birthday party, where Hannah got to remind herself of how to Tango. We got back about 11ish, with my shoes/jewellery still to do! Whilst I uploaded final content for the new version of The Big Bible Project, Hannah lined all my footwear up (about 35), and we assessed which I wear. Anything that causes discomfort, or that I don’t really like (“but they were expensive”), went into another clothing bank bag, 4 went into a ‘wear them in with socks & see how you get on with them’, whilst all the rest were polished up, and lined up ready to wear!

The jewellery box that was rammed full of lots of “big” jewellery, tarnished stuff, things that people have given me that aren’t really me, mixed in with the bits that I like! We were pretty ruthless by this point (it was pretty late!), but I was introduced to the silver polishing cloth that I didn’t know I had… and suddenly things are back to life. Anything that looks past it, or is something that I no longer wear… off it went – someone else can enjoy it!

SO: now all I have left to do is sew back together a couple of things, ensure I keep things hung up, iron some stuff (IRONING?!), and make a collage of stuff I like to look out for future shopping trips! 

I have spent much of the last 10-12 years, ever since we moved from our large home in Sussex to a much smaller one in Suffolk (not that I have ever truly lived in Suffolk), in gradually trying to declutter and focus more and more on what’s important. I feel that I still have a long way to go, but having spent last weekend in some serious decluttering (the physical space is nearly there, the electronic needs some more!), after going shopping yesterday and thinking I’m not sure that I need more… and knowing that I’m meeting with Brian Draper in a couple of weeks, I ensured I put aside some time this weekend to read his new book Less is More.

It’s been great to sit still for a while (no radio, TV) and just absorb some of the thinking. I don’t really want to turn this into a ‘task’ of a formal review, but would love to share a few snatches with you (and if you’re someone who’s horrified by people writing in their books – sorry – I’ve scribbled quite a lot on it)!

•  We’re always talking about “one day” I will do this, that, the other … but we find a comfortable physical place, and we just put it on hold… for a little longer!
• “Consumerism has a built-in obsolescence, for a very good reason: if we were truly satisfied with what we had, we wouldn’t feel the urge to consume more and more.”
• The example of bottled water, which our culture has persuaded us we need to pay for… and has also done with many other things such as adventure, inspiration, art, etc.
• To stop equating ‘quality of life’ with our possessions, and more with our interactions with others.
• The example of a gratitude diary, which I kept for the first year I was on antidepressants. Do I start one up again?
• We should give thanks for a dull news day, as it means no bad news (such as 9/11)… but those bad news days can shock us into putting our lives back into perspective.
• Rather than expecting everything to go wrong, ask yourself “What could go right today?”
• “But when, exactly, did life become just another problem to be solved? Who said it was something to be fixed? What if it were, instead, something rare to be witnessed, to be savoured, and to be appreciated?”
• Ask the simple questions that others are afraid to ask, and focus on developing what you’re good at, rather than spending hours correcting your weaknesses.
• What does silence sound like… reminds me of my trip to Doubtful Sound (which still see as the No 1 highlight of my round the world trip). Take time to stop & listen to it  (not be afraid of it)… savour the now.

Source: Uploaded by user via Bex on Pinterest

• We fashion our sense of identity from our wounds, and old/hurtful voices clamour in our head, if we allow that to restrict our choices. It can be difficult to hear over those.
• Go to places where oceans merge, etc.”In this kind of place, roles mean nothing. Titles mean nothing. Status means nothing. While you mean everything.”
• A blank page represents such promise, and each time you press ‘New Message’ for an email “you are confronted with a blank page and this is your chance to use it well. It is an invitation to craft something from nothing, with care and with love.” Each day presents ‘a blank page’ – watch out for the seemingly insignificant moments that can be squeezed out by what seems important.

• Don’t try and fill gaps in the conversation. Stop and properly listen – will make others feel valued.
•  The way we’re working isn’t working. We need to understand more about how we work in waves of energy, and need to look for spaces to renew energy as well as spend it. Otherwise, as I learnt with Beyond Chocolate, you’ll eat to stay awake, when what your body needs to function effectively is sleep. I’ve also learnt much more to take time to focus – I have Google docs for each of my roles, with things that need doing – pick a task and get going on it. I also used to have a rule in my PhD research – you can move something on the calendar 3 times then you have to do it!
• Adele’s success = not selling out!
• Find the Source of our refreshment and wisdom – return frequently to drink from it – and then let it flow through us… not trying to trap/hold it.
• Reconnect with creation.. and an interesting piece as someone who’s trying to run… trainers are BAD for our feet … causing us to run with our heels, and doing the work our feet are meant to do. Stop STAMPING on the earth, and learn to walk lightly on it.
• The 6-word Memoir (which doesn’t have to be for all time)
• Take time to listen to others stories, and think how we want our lives to be defined (as a challenge we set on Big Bible to write our own epitaph – then work towards it!).
• Start somewhere! “We cannot do everything after all. And when we realise that we can’t, we are liberated to do one thing wherever we are, and to make the kind of difference to the world around us that only we can make.”
• Start listening to ‘what I do is me’- and be introduced to the person you were created to be.
• Slow down and savour the moment… taste that sandwich, say thank you to the person who served it to you…
• Learn to live with poise (from within), rather than pose (a false identity which takes energy to maintain). It’s not always about getting from A to B, but about how you get there.
• Learn to relate to each other without an agenda, and without judging.
• What are the passions, values and beliefs at our centre, and how do we reach them?
• “… in a go-getting world, we may like to think that ‘the sky’s the limit’, when really our fear of flying keeps us earthbound.” We have a responsibility to be free, whatever the situation, and need to be unafraid to fail.

A reference to a great quote (as someone who has a PhD in the arts!) – acknowledged unverified:

• We are all involved in life’s battles – fight them – but choose the right battles.
• A soldier follows orders: kill or be killed. A warrior fights with the example of their lives, with physical fighting the last option where necessary. Matthew Fox: The true warrior is “a co-creator, a worker with the Spirit, a worker for Spirit. The warrior’s hands are the hands of Spirit at work; the warrior’s mind is seized by theSpirit precisely in the work of creativity.”
• We tend to live in a haze … stop to see what’s right in front of our eyes:

• Spend time outdoors in reflection. Stop. Close your eyes for a full minute. Listen, smell, feel.
• Autumn: the trees allow themselves to be laid bare in order for renewal, rather than holding onto the gloriously coloured leaves.
• Eckhart Tolle The Power of Now: “Death is a stripping away of all that is not you. The secret of life is to ‘die before you die’ and find that there is no death.”
• A mention of Michael McCarthy and the difficulty in describing a butterfly: “It has been well said that science gives us knowledge but takes away meaning.”
• Believe that there must be more to life than this.

Well, that was a little more than I intended to write, but I hope that it inspires you to buy the book.

From an interview in Woman Alive magazine.

Good Friday I had a big clear out of the flat in Winchester, with several trips down to the bin, and a car load to charity shops.  Visiting my parents (my Dad’s not well), I then decided I wanted to go for all the stuff in the garage. I’d had half a go before Christmas (and a big go before my world travels… in fact I started at the age of 25, when we moved from a 6 bed house to a 3!), but hadn’t really had time/energy to do a lot. This morning, having got as far as I could (there’s a bit more to do, but the big big lot is done), I found in Woman Alive:

This (& 2 boxes in the other part of the garage) are all I have there now – mostly cow stuff, kitchen stuff & photo albums (which will all find a home whenever I get my own place… one day):

Tidy pile...

And look what a mess I left behind (it’s not all mine… me starting encouraged my Mum out too)… a car load for the charity shop & the rest for a big bonfire we think (the recycling bin is a little small):

Bonfire/charity pile!

I’ve put my back out a bit moving all this around, so my PhD papers are still sat in the car – hopefully it’s clear they’re nothing valuable! A lot of books weren’t worth selling, but I’ve got some on Amazon.

How far do you go with your spring cleaning?

Fundraising in schools has always been absolutely key to our success – and, one year, we came up with the cracking idea of writing a little play that every school in the country could perform on Red Nose Day. Fresh off the back of writing Four Weddings and a Funeral, I was pretty sure I was the man for the job.

I wrote a 15-minute epic, in which children had to dress as various vegetables – and there was a very good moral at the end about social justice and parsnips or something. Throbbing with expectation and the excitement of creating a dramatic phenomenon, we sent out 22,000 copies of the play to the UK’s schools.

Final research revealed that, in the end, eight schools performed it. We never found out the total money raised. But it wasn’t a lot. Something in the region of £50. Or a bit less.

Read full story.

http://www.sxc.hu/photo/603467

What do you think of this story in the Evening Standard this evening?

We all tell the odd lie. I maintain, for example, that I have no idea how the teapot in my kitchen lost its handle. And when I missed my yoga class last week it was – of course – because I was feeling unwell.

Since we’re taking confession, hands up if you’ve ever told this one: “I deserve this large slice of chocolate cake because I went for a run yesterday.” How about: “I never eat junk food. I have a very balanced diet”? Ooh, you big fat liar!
The truth is, according to a recent poll, that women tell almost 500 lies every year about what they eat, with the top fib being, “It was only a small portion.”

Meanwhile, the overweight among us are either oblivious or won’t admit to being fat. Despite an obesity rate among UK adults of 24 per cent, only six per cent of men and women identify themselves as obese.

“There is a great deal of denial – unwitting and deliberate – surrounding obesity and food reporting,” says Professor David Haslam of the National Obesity Forum. “Part of the problem is that adults and children compare themselves with their peers who are fat, so they don’t see anything out of the ordinary.”

2011

2011 has been a difficult year. In February 2009 I qualified as a Life Coach, aspects of which have affected much of my practice within work, but also my life itself. Two quotes which stuck with me from the sessions:

• “There’s no point painting the wall if it needs knocking down”.
• “Sometimes you have to go through the shit, it’s just a case of finding a way of landing in 3ft, rather than 6ft of shit”.

Shortly afterwards I was put on antidepressants (yes, I know we’re not supposed to talk about that, but how are we supposed to support people in dealing with it if we don’t accept that it’s an illness that needs treatment), and started to meet with a counsellor to talk through how my life is the way it is…

Who gets depression?

It’s partly because I have been told so many times “you’re the last person I would have thought suffered from depression” that I thought I’d write this …

This Christmas I picked up Christopher Cantopher ‘The Curse of the Strong‘, a book that many others had identified as particularly helpful and this assessment of the ‘personality type’ that he identifies as most likely to struggle is striking (not the ‘should pull their socks up’ kinda person):

• (moral) strength
• reliability
• diligence
• strong conscience
• strong sense of reliability
• a tendency to focus on the needs of others before one’s own
• sensitivity
• vulnerability to criticism
• self-esteem dependent on the evaluation of others (I’m not so sure about that one)

http://www.uniview.co.uk/acatalog/info_8_1057.html

Things need to heal properly before putting too much pressure back on … otherwise relapse, potentially worse, will occur… Currently, I’m still on mine… it allows me to continue to be Bex…

Failing Well

A couple of great quotes from Cantopher’s book:

Now, what’s really hard but correspondingly rewarding is to fail well. This means taking on a range of tasks, experiences and challenges, understanding that you will win some and lost some, forgiving yourself your failures and learning from them. This way you develop a life that is rich in texture and free from fear.

followed up by:

While I had succeeded in avoiding failure, he had embraced it, with the result that he had a new skill, at which he was clearly having a great time. In order to achieve success that is worthwhile and wide-ranging, you must first learn to fail well. Every happy person I have met has achieved this. It doesn’t though, mean making your life a struggle to achieve the impossible.

Making Decisions

On my Christmas/New Year holiday in Egypt last year I knew I had to make a big decision… not as a New Year Resolution (I don’t make those, if life coaching has taught me anything else, it’s that we need to make changes when the time is right, not at some random time in the calendar, although time off in the New Year can help us take time to think) … but moving forward… I’ve made huge steps in 2011… but I’m not good at congratulating myself! In many ways, I should congratulate myself that I managed to have nearly 6 days doing ‘nothing’ over Christmas, but instead I’m looking at what I still haven’t finished for 2011, and stressing about 2012!

So, what ARE my hopes and dreams for 2012?

Anyway, this was the original plan for my post… so what do I know I have to look forward to in 2012:

• Getting my paperwork (physical and digital) sorted… including my websites…
• Move PhD towards publication (with help from Martin Polley), along with other writing (including a book with @MarkHowe)
• Get lots of people involved in #BigRead12 with Tom Wright for Lent
• Working with @adamswbrown in getting the @bigbible site sorted, incorporating @biblefresh
• The Great South Run (October) and having fun down the gym
• Berlin with Erika, and seeing lots more of my friends, and working out more fun travel!
• Speaking engagements with CofE, in Dresden, with #DigiLocal (see here)
• Housegroup: Walks, The Scillies, Paralympics
• Greenbelt (August Bank Holiday)
• Conferences (they are fun!): Thinking Digital, PELECon12, ALTC12, CNMAC12, JISCEL12 (see 2011).
• Enjoying my Winchester work: JISC projects, training, teaching

I’ll probably remember more, but for now… let’s get some fresh air!!

http://www.sxc.hu/photo/667183

Is ‘teacher training’ at Higher Education level worthwhile? Well, as someone who’s in the Learning & Teaching Development Unit, clearly I think so! I completed my PGCLTHE earlier this year, and found it great to challenge my thinking on the way that I teach, and it’s changed my practice hugely. There’s plenty of comments on this story in the Times Higher Education:

Where academics were instructed on how to teach better, Dr Robson said, peer review of their lectures could be used, although this would only be right for staff that had received “long-term training”.

Dr Robson added that self-evaluation could be useful, with lecturers asked to provide examples of how their training did or did not improve their teaching.

They could also use National Student Survey scores to show improvements, she argued.

Other areas could be assessed more simply (whether staff had absorbed basic health and safety training could be ascertained using a simple questionnaire, for example). But leadership and development coaching needed something “more detailed”, Dr Robson said, such as appraisals by line managers three to sixth months after completion.

Where staff took on much more “intensive” training, scores could be given on performance, which could then be used to calculate the return on investment.

Corporate coaching has spread rapidly from the US across the world, with the business sector happy to buy in such support for employees they are grooming to be high flyers. The higher education sector, in contrast, would appear to offer a less obviously lucrative, and perhaps more sceptical, market. Yet coaches in the US, and to a lesser extent in the UK, are working with an increasing number of academics, helping them to confront not only the challenges they share with many other professionals (notably the sheer lack of hours in the day) but also the pressures specific to the sector.

Nathalie Houston, associate professor of English at the University of Houston, has just begun to offer coaching to academics outside her own institution. In addition to her full-time tenured job teaching and researching Victorian literature, literary theory and the history of the book, since 2009 Houston has been involved in the ProfHacker blog, where a team of more than a dozen writers offer “tips about teaching, technology and productivity”.

“I write about time management and work-life balance,” she says, “topics I’ve been interested in for a long time.”

Recognising that she often provided informal coaching to colleagues, friends and students, Houston decided to gain a formal qualification and set up a practice that she hopes to extend to about 15 clients.

She “meets” them, either for 30 minutes three times a month or 45 minutes twice a month, by phone or by Skype – mostly, she says, “on Fridays, when I don’t teach or have university meetings, and on Saturdays, so it’s compacted into a certain section of my week”.

The basic principles are simple. “While therapy tends to look to the roots of the problem, to trace it back to some dynamic or trauma,” explains Houston, “coaching is about what you can do now to change the situation.

“As one well-known coach said, if a stick in a river gets stuck, you don’t ask what made it stuck – it just needs a nudge to go on floating down the river. Coaching focuses on the nudge. It’s action-oriented, and present- and future-directed.

Read full story, and I’m ahead on this one, thanks to The Kerslake Company! We have been in discussions recently within the LTDU at the University of Winchester, re bringing together a group of people who are interested in coaching, which you can see from my PGCLTHE assignment, I am.

I would go to the bottom of these images and read up…: